Why be a good mum when you can be a deadbeat parent?

A woman, tired of her ex-pollinator living the life while she sweated for the kids, came on social media with court documents and receipts to prove that all she ever wanted was a meaningful co-parenting relationship.

Was she bullied or what! She was accused of being a bitter baby mama who was still lusting after her ex.  

The man who was responsible for her pain admitted that he has not seen his children for the last two years and before you could blink, social media pundits had rallied fully behind him.

This is a man who had moved on and got another woman pregnant before he officially left the relationship he had had with his girlfriend of five years. This is a man who allowed his children to be kicked out of a house their mother had renovated and made a home for them. This is a man who did not show up for his sick child, but only had to look at the camera for us to take him back without judgment or question.

It got me thinking. Why would I want to be a mother when I can be a deadbeat dad? I want that!

I want that because this grace and understanding is not usually present when we bully mothers for working too hard to the detriment of their children.

I don’t know where that grace is when it comes to single mothers because they are relentlessly bullied on social media and by society. The thing I know for sure is that you become a beneficiary to unending streams of grace when you are a father who “at least tries” and I want to be that. I want to receive accolades for doing the bare minimum.

As a present mother who is doing the bulk of parenting, you have to deal with the exhaustion of it all and as if it isn’t enough you have to make sure you are not bitter about the hardly ever present partner who expects you to parent with only 2K – in this crazy economy. You have to be nice and grateful to him because in a world full of irresponsible fathers, “at least he is trying...”

I do not want to be nice and grateful for receiving the bare minimum. I want to be appreciated for sending 2K when my mood permits it. I want my children to have a great responsible parent who cares for their every need and whim while I visit with two packets of crisps on a random Wednesday before I disappear again for 42 weeks.

I want the never-ending grace that protects deadbeat dads when they come back 30 years later to finally “claim” you as their own. They come back and your anger stops being important. You suddenly have to forgive them because, “How dare you reject your father? Or “He is old, he may die soon.”

The society we live in actively protects irresponsible fathers and it is evident in the way the phrase “daddy issues” is an insult used to shame fatherless women instead of it being an indictment on absent fathers who neglect their children to a point of traumatising them.

The most famous absent dad in Kenya today used the saga to describe the two women he has been involved with in the recent past as if he isn’t actively contributing to the growing population of fatherless children. An absent dad should not be twisting his mouth to talk about daddy issues, but we do not shame men who neglect their children and this makes them shameless.

The shame we do not have for deadbeat dads, we have it in abundance for women. If she doesn’t want children, we shame her for not filling the earth as God willed us to do. If she is a single mother, she is shamed for not choosing a responsible partner more than the partner is shamed for being irresponsible.

If she can’t breastfeed, she is shamed for trying to maintain her youth. If she chooses a sperm donor to avoid the woes of dealing with irresponsible men, she is shamed for being too selfish.

There is so much shame reserved for women and I want no part of it. I want someone to congratulate me for just making an effort to see my child.

– karimiberyl@gmail.com